Virtual Agents

Society has been acquiring the benefits that artificial intelligence can produce ever since AI has been around. The summer of 1956 was a turning point for many scientists who would become leaders in their branches for decades. It was at a workshop organised at the Dartmouth College when the field of artificial intelligence research was actually founded.

The first ever serious proposal in the philosophy of AI was six years earlier when Alan Turing published a paper in which he discussed about the possibility of creating machines which can think. He devised the Turing Test which is today recognised as a criterion of intelligence, and it depends on the ability of a computer program to impersonate a human being in a real time written conversation.

Artificial intelligence helps businesses in a huge variety of ways. Whether it’s in the field of marketing, customer relationship management, or recommendation, AI helps in business decision making.

Today, the most widely used artificial intelligence is in the form of virtual assistants, who make life easier for everyone who opts to use them. They can be defined as software agents which perform tasks or services for an individual.

The first ever machine which could recognise speech was the IBM Shoebox, launched back in 1962. Even though it had relatively few abilities such as recognising 16 words and the digits from 0 to 9, it was a milestone in the development of artificial intelligence.

But, how do virtual assistants work? They can function through text, voice, and by taking or uploading images. There are three important segments in AI: machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing.

Machine learning is actually a field of computer science and it uses statistical techniques to give a computer an ability to learn with data.

Deep learning is based on learning data representations, and uses multiple layers of units for extraction and transformation.

Natural language processing (NLP) deals with programming computers to process large amounts of natural language data, and the interactions between computers and human language.

Today’s state of the art virtual assistants can be found in many devices and objects. They may be integrated in smart speakers, instant messaging apps, mobile operating systems, smartphones independent of the operating systems, smartwatches, appliances, cars, websites, etc. There are many virtual assistants out there such as: Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft Cortana, which are among the most widely used ones.

These virtual assistants have hundreds of abilities and are growing on a daily basis. Let’s take a look at some of the biggest features that they have today.

Providing information about the weather.

Arranging meetings and making appointments.

Setting alarms and making to-do lists.

Navigating.

Delivering important information such as birthdays, events, concerts etc.

Home automation.

Playing music, radio stations, etc.

Streaming videos, movies, etc.

If you want to find our more, scroll down and take a look at the infographic which depicts 28 brands who use artificial intelligence to enhance their presence.